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Perhaps the most iconic of sleepover pranks, tricking your snoozing friends into peeing themselves has an obvious appeal. First, your friend just peed themselves (what’s not to enjoy here) and second, it feels basically like you cast a magic spell on them. While its credibility is suspect and there’s a possibility it won’t have the intended effect, it works often enough that you may as well find out for yourself…. [1]

Steps

Part 1

Preparing to Prank

1

Drink plenty of liquids before bed. This prank definitely won’t work if your prankee goes to bed with an empty bladder. To avoid suspicion, you should offer plenty of soda, water, tea, or juice to everyone at the sleepover throughout the night (not just the person you’re looking to prank), and drink plenty yourself.

When you need to use the bathroom, make an excuse or sneak away when possible, to avoid putting the idea of using the bathroom in anybody else’s mind.

Other snacks with high water content, like yogurt and soup, are great choices as well. Watermelon is particularly saturated in it (as its name might imply) so supplying everyone with watermelon slices before bed is a low-key method to enable your mischief. [2]

2

Stay up late. If a particularly early bedtime has been set, it can be difficult to tell if your bunkmates are asleep or just lying there wide awake with their eyes shut. Stay up late, if possible, so that friends only fall asleep when they’re obviously tired (sometimes right in their seat, while still holding their Nintendo controller).

3

Keep the target (the “prankee”) occupied. Tired friends who are entertained (such as by a movie or game) are less likely to use the bathroom before they fall asleep, ensuring they’ll go to sleep with plenty of liquids in them.

Take care not to overplay your hand. Too much attention focused on how much a particular friend is drinking, or repeatedly stopping them from using the bathroom can give you away.

If you don’t want to single any one person out beforehand, playing games with the group so that everyone is suitably occupied is a viable tactic.

4

Ensure the prankee is asleep. This only has a chance of working if the intended target is actually sleeping. Listen for telltale snores, or look for a slack, open mouth. Quietly call their name if you’re unsure.

Part 2

Dipping the Sleeper’s Hand in Warm Water

1

Fill up a bowl with warm water. A plastic bowl is better than a cup, since it has more room for the hand, and being plastic means it won’t be cracked if it’s knocked over. You don’t want your parents (or your friend’s parents) bringing you down after a successful prank because you used a nice ceramic bowl, and the prankee jolted awake and cracked the bowl.

Although it’s a bit of speculation (as the efficacy of this prank is disputable), if this prank works it’s likely through the power of suggestion. The same mechanism is what can make us want to pee when we hear running water. [3]

The water must be warm, but it should never be hot. Hot water could burn your friend.

2

Bring the warm water quietly into the room. Even if you don’t wake the victim, you always run the risk of waking someone else who would witness your part in this prank. Only you can determine whether this is an issue or not, as it depends only on how secretive you’re aiming to be.

3

Clear the splash zone. It’s highly likely for the prankee to knock the bowl over, intentionally or not, so you don’t want anything to get ruined if this happens. Delicately move everything you’d mind getting soggy out of the vicinity (a five-foot radius around the sleeper should be safe), taking special care to ensure all electronics are out of the way.

4

Place the sleeper’s hand into the water. You must contend now with the position your prankee has fallen asleep in. There are any number of possible arm placements; calmly assess the situation to find the easiest way to get their hand into the water.

If their hand is dangling from a bed, you might be able to slide the bowl right underneath it.

If it’s hanging slack from a bunk bed or over the arm of a sofa, you might need to stack some books underneath the bowl to reach their hand, or place the bowl onto a stool.

If it’s not dangling, take care! Be very gentle as you aim to reposition their hand and arm so that it can drape into the bowl. Take a position that will allow you to feign sleep (or quickly hide) if they awake.

If it’s under their head or body, you’re probably not going to succeed in moving it. Bide your time, or find a new person to prank.

5

Feign sleep. It would probably be wise to hop back into bed at this point, and pretend you played no part in what’s about to unfold. If questioned, why, you were in bed the whole time!

6

Keep the secret. Part of the fun with this prank is everybody's uncertainty about whether or not it will even work. Keeping the success or failure of your quest to achieve bed-wettage a secret helps to maintain that aura of mystery, so don't spread the word!

Keeping quiet also avoids shaming or bullying the prankee afterward, which is important. Bullying goes against the spirit of pranking, and is never acceptable.

What if I want to do the hand in a bowl of warm water trick but my friend is a light sleeper?

wikiHow Contributor

Community Answer

It is very risky then. However, if you are very careful, you can execute it perfectly but always remember to be very quiet and quick. If there is any sign of waking up, then don't do it or quickly back away and hide.

No, you must use warm water. The warm water stimulates a chemical that reminds the body of the water it contains, therefore making your victim wet the bed. Cold water does not trigger this and may wake your victim up instead.

If there are security cameras in a bedroom, you have bigger problems than a bed wetting prank. Look for cameras in the hallways during the day when planning your escapade. If you're with people who absolutely no sense of humor, don't use the prank at all, regardless of the presence or absence of cameras.

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Tips

Don’t single out friends or people who you don’t believe will find a prank war fun, or who you believe will have difficulty dealing with the embarrassment. Pranks should not be cruel, and should ideally be fun in some capacity for everyone (as the victim, there can be plenty of fun in plotting prank revenge).

If you’re suspecting this prank may be played upon you, try to sleep on your hands, and always remember to use the bathroom before going to sleep.

Don't do this if you aren't prepared to clean up! If you get found out, you might be the sole person responsible for scrubbed out the stain, too, so be careful.

Make sure you have a cover story for what you did that night of the pranking.

If you plan to do this prank, make sure the person you're pranking brought extra underwear or clothes.

If you find yourself as the victim of this prank, it’s rare that you’ll find a way out with your dignity entirely intact. One bold method is to own up it—just act like it’s not a big deal to wet the bed, or even that it’s cool. Hey, it worked for Billy Madison.

Don't play this prank on someone if you know they have problems wetting the bed already, it will make them feel bad or embarrassed.

Have a sense of humor if it happens to you!

It’s not considerate to play this prank on a friend who has actual problems with bed-wetting. Shame and embarrassment could make their real issue tougher for them to conquer. [4]

Don't do this trick on someone who has a bad sense of humor. They might hold grudge and try to get back at you.

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wikiHow is a wiki similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are written collaboratively. To create this article, 89 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has also been viewed 730,540 times.